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dazzlaon New Startup Now Pulling In Over $100k in Monthly Revenues

I'm a single founder with no investment working on mobile apps for daily deals. I've been working on my mobile apps (iOS and Android) for longer and I'm not getting anywhere near that kind of revenue. I would love to talk to you about marketing. I'm very inspired by your post. Any chance you have time for a chat?

dazzlaon Apple is actually asking for 100% of SaaS mobile revenue

What about Apple's rule that the in app subscription needs to be the same or better than available elsewhere?

dazzlaon Android Gmail App: Stealing Emails via XSS

I'm a Brit living in the US and had a tense moment at a US airport when I'd "got my date of birth wrong" because I'd used the UK format.

dazzlaon Find out what is new from iDealyzer

Can a coming soon page for new features of an existing product go viral?

dazzlaon What Makes an Entrepreneur? Four Letters: JFDI

I find that having a day job and other life distractions actually helps with this a lot. I spend a lot of the day thinking things through so that by the time I get to having the time to do something I'm ready to actually do it.

dazzlaon Scraping made easy with jQuery and SelectorGadget (and Node.js!)

I've tried PHP scraping many different ways and settled on http://simplehtmldom.sourceforge.net . It uses jQuery style selectors as well.

dazzlaon Ask HN: How do you break free from your 9 to 5?

I'm in the same situation (wife, kid, mortgage, etc). I've been working on escaping from the 9 to 5 for at least 5 years trying various different things. I have always battled with the thought that if I could only work on this full time... I don't live in Silicon Valley either. I do get very disheartened but overall I keep motivated and going. I do think of all of this as my education. Each project I try builds on the last even if indirectly.

I now have a side project that is growing pretty consistently. It took me at least a year to realize that this could really be something. Over that time there have been periods where I have given up and not put much time into it. So far I've always come back. I can now look back and see that the months I gave up revenue stagnated. I can also clearly see what I did that increases revenue. I can also see that if I keep working at the same rate (some evenings and some weekends) and revenue increases at the same rate that it should grow into something that will replace the 9 to 5 in the near future. That is particularly exciting to me as I want a business without the stress, complications and long hours. I now look forward to not working full time on it.

So keep at it. Something your working on now maybe the solution. It doesn't have to be big and exciting. There's plenty of people trying the same. It's not easy for sure but certainly doable.

dazzlaon IPhone App Pricing Strategy

Amazon's Associates API requires prior written permission for any mobile use. Apparently they are giving that out a little more now. I sure hope they give me permission.

dazzlaon $100K in 4 months: A niche app's path to App Store success

I based it of this blog post. The last comment is me with a slightly updated PHP version http://blogs.oreilly.com/iphone/2008/08/scraping-appstore-re....

My site is Drupal 6 based and I wrote a module to do the scrapping and populate a CCK content type that I display with a Drupal view. I configured Triggers and Actions for the notifications.

If there are any other Drupal people out there I'm happy to share the code. Just needs a little polish before I could submit it.

dazzlaon $100K in 4 months: A niche app's path to App Store success

The single biggest weakness (or gap) in our ability to provide amazing customer service is that a lot of people still use iTunes App Store reviews to communicate their issues but there is no way for us devs to contact those people to help them resolve it. Apple needs to fix this one-way channel.

This is very frustrating. I don't think users realize there is no way for developers to get back to them and so many questions go unanswered. In the end I wrote a script to pull all the reviews into my apps site so I can post comments there and I let the users know that in the app. Plus now it's also easy for me to send myself a notification for a new/updated review. Seams to be working so far as some users have come back and added comments.

dazzlaon The Widescreen Laptop Conspiracy

Yeah, everything is switching to the 1080p TV glass. I bought a Dell Latitude this year just before they switched as well. Those 120 pixels really make a difference.

dazzlaon The Widescreen Laptop Conspiracy

I'm with you for the photo frames but losing the space on the TV has already happened. Most of the content your watching will be widescreen so you'll have the bars top and bottom effectively giving you that 27" 16:9 TV. Unless of course you are full screening everything and not seeing a lot of the content as the sides are being chopped off.

dazzlaon Amazon’s Disruptive Android App Store Now Open To Developers — Full Details

I don't think they will do a code review. They won't even have the source. I should think the'll just do basic testing as Apple does.

dazzlaon Amazon’s Disruptive Android App Store Now Open To Developers — Full Details

Your list price can't be more than anywhere else you sell it.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2071795

dazzlaon Amazon’s Disruptive Android App Store Now Open To Developers — Full Details

You can't set the list price any higher than anywhere else.

i. List Price. The “List Price” for an App is an amount that does not exceed, at any time, the lowest list price or suggested retail price for such App (including any similar edition, version or release) available or previously available on any Similar Service or the lowest actual price at which you make or made such App available for sale through any Similar Service. You will update the List Price for each App as necessary to ensure that it meets the requirements of this section 5i.

dazzlaon Amazon’s Disruptive Android App Store Now Open To Developers — Full Details

No one notice that you must get all your apps through Amazon approval before you can make them available for sale elsewhere?

b. Timing of Deliveries. ... You will deliver future Apps within 14 days before the initial availability date you designate for the App (the “Initial Availability Date”). The Initial Availability Date must be no later than the first date you permit the App to be listed for pre-order or sale on any Similar Service. ...

EDIT: And updates as well. So no more releasing emergency break fixes.

dazzlaon I've had more fragmentation problems with iOS/iPhone than with Android

It has been a few months since I tried to downgrade but I certainly did try and killed too much time in the process. Could you point me in the direction of some instructions?

dazzlaon I've had more fragmentation problems with iOS/iPhone than with Android

I absolutely I agree testing on a device is necessary. In fact I use push notifications which cannot be tested at all in the simulator. It is also true with the Android emulator. As an emulator it is closer to a device but still not the same.

However the bugs I had would have been picked up in the simulator.

Thanks for the pointer for the older version of Xcode. That would have been great but at this point I may as well do my 3.1.3 testing on the device.

dazzlaon I've had more fragmentation problems with iOS/iPhone than with Android

I had an iPod Touch with 3.1.3 on it but by then I'd upgraded to to 4.x with no way to downgrade it. Sure I could have bought another sooner but this is not something I was expecting as up till that point I could always test in the simulator for any version.

dazzlaon I've had more fragmentation problems with iOS/iPhone than with Android

That's right you can select all those versions accept 3.1.3 and that is the problem.

dazzlaon Ask HN: What has progressed in your field in 2010?

I ended up writing a fair bit of screen scraping this year. By far the best way I have found so far is using http://simplehtmldom.sourceforge.net/. I have tried yahoo pipes but scraping HTML with regex is a bad idea. I've also tried dapper but didn't find it reliable enough.

dazzlaon Ask HN: Suggestions for Making Enterprise Java More Enjoyable

What about groovy/grails? It's still java but with a lot of the modern toys.

dazzlaon Ask HN: Your goals for 2011

My goal is to continue the 23% average monthly revenue growth in 2011 that I had in 2010. Then my side project revenue should match what I earn at my day job.

dazzlaon Engineers: Build businesses not apps

Establishing a relationship could be signing up for their affiliate program and making use of its product feed. Pretty low barrier to entry.

dazzlaon Business Lessons from 37 Signals $1000 Master Class

Sounds like your mind is already made up. I'm not here to convince you or anyone else to go. Just sharing that I had a more positive take on the day.

dazzlaon Business Lessons from 37 Signals $1000 Master Class

Meetups are great if you are lucky enough to live near one of them. Moving to Silicon Valley is not really a cheaper option.

dazzlaon Business Lessons from 37 Signals $1000 Master Class

I found the day a lot deeper than can be summarized into some twitter posts. If you want the text/ramen edition of their advice most of it is in their books. What you get from attending the master class is the same advice but demonstrated through examples of their own projects in the morning and attendees projects in the afternoon. It all adds up to a much richer experience. There is nothing like getting ideas and advice in person. But of course you may not agree with everything and it may not all apply to you. It's up to you to apply it as you see fit.

dazzlaon Why Apple can’t beat Android

Assuming you've made the choice to get a smartphone. If you haven't then the difference between a regular and smart phone is really the plan cost.

dazzlaon Why Apple can’t beat Android

The cost of the phone is almost becoming irrelevant. The cost of the data plan is the real barrier to entry as it dwarfs the cost of the phone.

dazzlaon How We Raised $1.3 Million as First-Time Founders

I was looking at adding Groupon to my daily deal mobile app but Groupon seams to be very specific about no aggregation. I wonder how yipit figured that out?